Event Staffing Marketplace Blog

Event Staffing: The Nature of the Beast

The event industry is one that has long since struggled with unreliable staff. As an event organizer, you have no doubt felt the sting of rearranging a shorthanded event, or frantically calling the staffing agency to figure out where your servers are. We know we have.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times you confirm with people, someone is bound to cancel, or worse, not show up at all. In fact, the average no-show rate is 20-30% of staff booked. 20-30%! That’s a huge amount, and way higher than it should be. Part of the issue appears to be a lack of attachment to the event organizer themselves. Without constant interaction, it is hard to foster a sense of loyalty with contract staff who may very well never have to see you again.

Even when we first launched and we would call people a few hours before their shifts to confirm, we still had the occasional person not show up. In fact, if you check out our Blunder Blog, you can read some of our early horror stories. Unfortunately, there are a few.

The good news is that we were small enough and new enough when these incidents occurred to implement a feature to deter this behaviour. Since implementing a monetary penalty to deter cancellations and no-shows, the rate decreased dramatically! Now, a very small percentage of staff cancel/do not show up to their shift. And if they do, you as the event organizer has the final say whether to charge them a shift cancellation fee or if they actually have an excuse, let them go with a warning. The power is in your hands, as it should be.

We know the nature of the industry; we’re not trying to hide it, we’re just trying to make it better.